“The Year of the Sales Stack.” That’s what TechCrunch dubbed 2016. Unfortunately, as a sales leader, your time fills too quickly to allow for evaluations of all of the software and services that could strengthen your tech stack this year. We’re here to help. This series offers snapshots of some of the top software and service providers in the sales category. You can read each in under 5 minutes, and then find out the best way to learn more for any that inspire you to do so.
Your Sales Stack Snapshot of Skaled Consulting
Our fifth snapshot in the Sales Stack series features Skaled Consulting, which helps companies optimize their sales process, people, and technology to accelerate business growth for scaling success. We interviewed the team’s VP of Sales, Matt Lopez.
- Every sales leader reading this post will receive multiple calls and emails today from vendors. If your sales team were calling right now, what would they say?
“If they were calling, you would already know why. Sales as a function is trending in the direction of efficiency, not volume. Engaging with cold prospects using more efficient channels such as marketing automation allows salespeople to prioritize calls to prospects based on their level of engagement. Calls into highly engaged prospects are known as ‘warm calls’, and where cold calls traditionally convert at a rate of 1-3%, warm calls have tendency to convert at a much higher rate – some claim 10x.”
- Where does your solution fall within the modern sales technology stack?
“I like to think about Skaled’s services as the oil that makes the machine run fast. We typically first make sure that we have repeatable customer acquisition process that aligns with the ideal buyer journey and does not vary from salesperson to salesperson. Once we validate the process with optimal conversion rates throughout the funnel, we focus on ways to accelerate the process by moving to heavy machinery. Ensuring that you have the right stack implemented and that people are using it correctly is critical. We see a lot sales teams using a little bit of everything in wide variety of ways. The amount of data and distraction this causes can easily overwhelm people and often hinders productivity but, when set up properly fuels the type of growth many companies are looking for.”
- During a time when the amount of sales technology and service options available seem infinite, why should sales leaders pay attention to Skaled?
“I highlighted this in my last response. The amount of sales-tech available is growing rapidly. For many sales leaders it’s difficult to stay ahead of the curve. We have the fortune of working with hundreds of the fastest growing companies in the world. Some were looking for the blueprint for initial growth, others continued growth. Growth is not as simple as just having the right tools set up correctly. It’s having a data-backed strategy, the right roles supported by the right people, a customer acquisition process which scales with the business and and leaders who can anticipate the challenges ahead. Skaled partners with CEOs, founders and sales leaders to look around upcoming corners so that they can constantly leapfrog common growth-inhibiting challenges faced at each stage.”
- If the person reading this right blog now were to take you on, what specific problem would you solve for their business, and what kinds of quantifiable results could they expect?
“A lot of that depends on the stage of the business, their immediate challenges and long-term goals. For earlier stage companies I find that common challenges are moving toward sustainable sales and away from what tends to look like chaos under a magnifying glass. Some of the quantifiable results from implementing a repeatable sales / lead generation process with a well trained and tech-enabled sales team could be an increased ASP, shorter sales cycle or more profitable LTV/CAC. “
- Give us your absolute best customer success story in no more than 3 sentences.
“We’ll leave this to one of our clients. Here’s what Grovo has to say about us:
‘After experiencing two years of rapid growth, Grovo needed to move from light to heavy machinery. We engaged Skaled at a critical time – our sales team had doubled and we wanted to streamline organizational structure and handoff processes, as well as strategically combine efforts in certain markets. Skaled dramatically increased Grovo’s team alignment and sales velocity.’ – Jeff Fernandez, Cofounder & CEO, Grovo”
- Where’s the best place our readers can go to learn more about you?
“Please check out our newly redesigned www.skaled.com! We wanted to make sure that our website reflects our innovative and modern approach to sales consulting and the cool tech clients we work with.”
Have a sales software or service provider in mind for a future Sales Stack Snapshot? Email kristy@leveleleven.com. If there’s a specific question you’d like us to ask, include that in your email, too.
